A r ead­er writes: “Rather late in the day, I have been read­ing The Spec­ta­tor (UK) Christ­mas Spe­cial dat­ed 15/21/29 Decem­ber 2018. Page 28 refers to one Ron­nie Boyd, who had been a teenage Ordi­nary Sea­man aboard HMS Ajax in Decem­ber 1944, when Win­ston Churchill arrived in Athens to try to end the ongo­ing civ­il war.

“British forces ‘helped put down, with con­sid­er­able force of arms, a per­ceived partisan/communist uprising—the so-called Bat­tle of Athens, or the Dekemvri­ana in Greece,’ the arti­cle states. There fol­lows the extra­or­di­nary state­ment ‘Not Win­ston Churchill’s Finest Hour, it has to be said.’ It is accom­pa­nied by a mini-car­toon show­ing WSC on the bridge of HMS Ajax mak­ing this announce­ment.…

The suc­cess of the movie Dark­est Hour has prompt­ed many to look up oth­er film and video pre­sen­ta­tions of the Churchill saga. One of these is the 2005 series on Wal­ter Thomp­son, Churchill’s Body­guard, which a col­league tells me is a use­ful doc­u­men­tary. It is. All thir­teen episodes are on YouTube. I watched sev­er­al with­out complaint—rare for me.

Walter Henry Thompson

…was Win­ston Churchill’s pro­tec­tion offi­cer and detec­tive, on and off between 1921 and 1945. They had many adven­tures togeth­er, and Thomp­son wrote four books about his expe­ri­ences. The first, Guard from the Yard (1938, now very rare) involved Churchill and oth­ers whom Thomp­son pro­tect­ed.…

EXCERPT ONLY: For the com­plete text of “Churchill and the Baltic” with end­notes, please go to this page on the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project.

“No doubt where the right lay”: 1940-95

Sovi­et Ambas­sador Ivan Maisky was a “Bollinger Bol­she­vik” who mixed sup­port for Com­mu­nism with a love of West­ern lux­u­ry. Friend­ly to Churchill, he knew the Eng­lish­man hoped to sep­a­rate Hitler and Stal­in, even after World War II had start­ed.

But Maisky tend­ed to see what he wished to see. In Decem­ber he record­ed: “The British Gov­ern­ment announces its readi­ness to rec­og­nize ‘de fac­to’ the changes in the Baltics so as to set­tle ‘de jure’ the whole issue lat­er, prob­a­bly after the war.” There was no such announce­ment.…